Consensus: Obama campaign starts off with a faceplant

posted at 10:01 am on May 25, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

Not exactly news around here, of course, but the word is getting around. As Allahpundit wrote last night, the bad start to the Obama campaign has become apparent even to the campaign itself. Now the media has started to figure it out, too. Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei notes that the stumble goes pretty much across the board, too:

Nothing inspires Democrats like the Barack Obama swagger — the supreme self-confidence on stage, the self-certainty in private.

So nothing inspires more angst than when that same Obama stumbles, as he has leaving the gate in 2012.

That’s the unmistakable reality for Democrats since Obama officially launched his re-election campaign three weeks ago. Obama, not Mitt Romney, is the one with the muddled message — and the one who often comes across as baldly political. Obama, not Romney, is the one facing blowback from his own party on the central issue of the campaign so far – Romney’s history with Bain Capital. And most remarkably, Obama, not Romney, is the one falling behind in fundraising.

The two note that a bad three weeks may just end up being a bad three weeks, and that things may well smooth out for Obama after the campaign gets in motion. Of course, this campaign has been in motion for more than a year. They had prepared the Bain attack since at least last September, when Obama began pushing the Buffett Rule and started demagoguing wealth and the wealthy. This has been the longest wind-up to a pitch in recent memory, and it turned into a pratfall.

That’s why the nod to Team Obama being a “political team notorious for discipline and effectiveness” appears to be one last fantasy to which the media may be bitterly clinging. In 2008, all they needed to be was not the establishment, either in their own party or in general. They are effective at raising money, or rather they were, but only in the context of being a cipher. It’s easy to sell a product when no one knows what it is. This team has had to sell a record that few would buy, and Team O knows it. That is why their campaign has consisted of dodging ObamaCare, celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden, and throwing every distraction about Romney they can find to keep the media from talking about jobs and the economy.

Team O may prove effective at that, although so far they’re failing miserably. But they can only be effective at that strategy to the extent that the media enables them to avoid their record on the economy, and to the extent Team O can stop shooting itself in the foot in the shiny-object strategy.

Blowback

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Comments

Like an iceberg, they only saw the 10% visible, they miss the 90% of the people who are now raising their voices.

No matter how powerful of a “machine” if it is not effective, it is eventually mothballed…like Solyndra, you can pump all the money you want into Obama’s campaign, it has shown to be inept and unworkable.

and there’s this notion that soon the O-Team will somehow find their stride. This administration and its stewardship is a mess and will struggle through until Election Day trying to make themselves look like the best option for the electorate. Lipstick/pigs. They suck and it’s obvious.

DumboTheAvenger on May 25, 2012 at 10:51 AM

..there have been notable chinks in the MSM forward shields as well. Starting to surface are several searing interviews with Obama’s campaign folks in which the CNN people will not tolerate the bullsh*t. Also, CNN is on the rating ropes and, once the discover his will get them viewership, they might invest more heavily in — ahem — the truth.

Taken as a whole, there are an awful lot of warts showing this time around. Like the Kerry campaign in 2004, if this becomes the mantra, then the campaign struggles on defense rather than playing an effective offense.

In his first 1,218 days, President Obama added $5,094,341,558,534.01 to the national debt.

How big is that number? Compare it to some historic events (adjusted for inflation):

The Marshall Plan would cost, in today’s dollars $115.3 billion dollars — and it rebuilt Europe after World War II.

The Louisiana Purchase: $217 billion

The Race to the Moon: $237 billion

The S&L crisis: $256 billion

The Korean War: $454 billion

The New Deal: $500 billion

The invasion of Iraq, $709 billion

The Vietnam War: $698 billion

The ENTIRE NASA budget through 2011: $889.89 billion

So, all of these add up to $4.07619 trillion dollars, but Obama has already added $5,094,341,558,534.01 to the national debt.

In other words, we could have another Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, Race to the Moon, S&L crisis, Korea war, New Deal, invasion of Iraq, Vietnam, 50 years of NASA, and AND STILL HAVE $1.01814 TRILLION DOLLARS LEFT OVER and NOT SPEND THE AMOUNT OF MONEY THAT OBAMA HAS SPENT IN 1,218 DAYS.

At least in World War II, we were producing something, everybody was working, there was a tangible result, and we were able to stop Hitler and Hirohito.

what is messing Obama up is Newt and Rick and Rick and Ron hammered Romney on all the issues Obama was planning to hammer Romney on and now they are all old news.

gerry-mittbot-thank god for tough primaries

gerrym51 on May 25, 2012 at 11:33 AM

I’m not saying you were one of them but, when a certain FOX News pundit made this very point several times, that pundit was ridiculed as not knowing what they were talking about and accused of only wanting the primaries to run the full course for their own glorification and personal reasons.

I’m not saying you were one of them but, when a certain FOX News pundit made this very point several times, that pundit was ridiculed as not knowing what they were talking about and accused of only wanting the primaries to run the full course for their own glorification and personal reasons.

Yeah, definitely since last September, when Axelrod gave the go ahead for OWS to begin.

ardenenoch on May 25, 2012 at 11:46 AM

And then they screwed it up just as they pulled the trigger. Cory Booker stepped on the message that Bain was a corporate death star hovering over companies looking to blow them to pieces. That got other Democrats out there defending private equity. The series of television spots, each featuring a company “raped” by Bain fizzled out after just the first featuring a steel company that closed two years after Romney had left Bain (no idea if they will try to recycle this meme once the dust settles).

Obama tried to refocus the outrage by saying that this line of attack WAS what his campaign is all about. I sure hope so.

I thought this applied especially to the dem senate and the administration as a whole. We haven’t come very far from 1653:

Given in the House of Commons by Oliver Cromwell
20 April 1653

“… It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

“Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not bartere’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

“Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d; your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings, and which by God’s help and the strength He has given me, I now come to do.

“I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!”

I really wonder if Obama is as competitive as the opinion polls suggest. I have never seen the Republican side this determined to take a President down.

For Obama to complain about the actions of Bain Capital, which basically existed to and did help companies, is sickening. Compare what Romney and Bain did, at the risk of their investors’ money, with what Obama has done with Solyndra, GM, and the rest of their sorry long list of corrupt crony “capitalism.” (This is in quotes because these examples are not really capitalism–they are statism.)

If one of Bain’s companies going bankrupt is such a big deal, what about Solyndra? That Bain steel company went BK after 8 years. Solyndra did not even last 1 year after dipping at the taxpayer trough. And the corruption in the Solyndra deal was nothing short of breathtaking. It was run by a major Obama fundraiser who paid himself a bonus with taxpayer dollars while the company was preparing to go BK. Corruption can go little further.

If one of Bain’s companies going bankrupt is such a big deal, what about Solyndra? That Bain steel company went BK after 8 years. Solyndra did not even last 1 year after dipping at the taxpayer trough. And the corruption in the Solyndra deal was nothing short of breathtaking. It was run by a major Obama fundraiser who paid himself a bonus with taxpayer dollars while the company was preparing to go BK. Corruption can go little further.

Rogervzv on May 25, 2012 at 1:01 PM

Romney has already used this in interviews and speeches. He will do it again if Obama keeps up this stupid line of attack. “I’ll put my record as a private equity manager up against Obama’s, any day of the week.” I am sure we will see more than a couple of ads featuring Solyndra and First Solar before November.

Obama is always acting as though people are following him, rather than following their ideals which he is supposed to represent. I hope he keeps moving and doesn’t look back to discover that we’re no longer there!

MEGASNIKKER™ – Really tough to be addicted to something I don’t HAVE or USE………..have not had a tree up for Christmas here in many years…….as a HEADON crash survivor (I was the person on a motorcycle vs. Dodge pick up truck)……..EVERY Day is Christmas to me! This coming August 5th will be TWELVE years of ‘BONUS time’ for me on this mortal coil……….(and just shy of 150,000 miles on my current bike’s odometer so I definitely did not stop living!)

…….as a HEADON crash survivor (I was the person on a motorcycle vs. Dodge pick up truck)……..EVERY Day is Christmas to me! This coming August 5th will be TWELVE years of ‘BONUS time’ for me on this mortal coil……….(and just shy of 150,000 miles on my current bike’s odometer so I definitely did not stop living!)

Katfish on May 25, 2012 at 3:21 PM

Good for you!

I had to give up riding a bike 30 years ago when it became obvious I was either going to kill the bike or the bike was going to kill me …

… and in a moment of clarity I realized I was an adrenalin junkie and knew how that equation was going to be solved.

That’s why the nod to Team Obama being a “political team notorious for discipline and effectiveness” appears to be one last fantasy to which the media may be bitterly clinging. In 2008, all they needed to be was not the establishment, either in their own party or in general.

-bitterly clinging… heh…
-
Sometimes the non-establishment guy is just a lying thief, or a mental case… or both… Or with this team one of each…
Obama and Biden down and out in 2012…
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